Structural components commonly include a pair of rigid facesheets separated by a lightweight core. The lightweight core may be either a closed-cell material, such as honeycomb or closed-cell foam, or an open-cell configuration, such as a lattice or truss structure. However, structural elements with truss cores may tend to suffer from buckling failure due to the relatively high aspect ratios of individual struts within the truss core.
Additionally, related art truss cores typically include an interconnected network of ordered struts. However, the interconnectedness of related art truss structures makes the structure more susceptible to premature failure due to manufacturing defects in one or more of the struts. For instance, one or more of the struts in a related art truss structure may include a manufacturing defect that causes premature buckling or bending deformation of those defective struts and the premature failure of those defective struts may, in turn, lead to the failure of the overall structure. Accordingly, truss structures with an ordered arrangement of interconnected struts have an increased sensitivity to the premature failure of the one or more defective struts within the truss structure.
Additionally, related art truss structures may increase the strut diameter and/or alter the angle of the struts to compensate for anticipated manufacturing defects in the struts. However, increasing the diameter of the struts increases the overall weight of the structure and altering the strut angles trades off between compression strength and shear strength of the structure.